Tuesday, 9 December 2008

OPENING UP FAITH BASED SCHOOLS

I am a member of Holborn and St.Pancras Constituency Labour Party. This motion for General Committee (GC) caught my eye and I give it my full support!

This GC notes that the Government has re-affirmed its commitment to the role of faith based schools within our education system.This GC believes that, in the first instance, education should be entirely secular.

However, this GC also recognises that over a third of schools within the maintained sector (and academies and city technology colleges) are faith schools, and that the vast majority of these are either Church of England or Roman Catholic. GC notes that faith schools are allowed, when over-subscribed, to offer a preference to pupils following their designated faith.

GC further notes the recent Government research, which discovered widespread non-compliance with the statutory admissions code. Most of the non-complying schools were faith schools. This GC believes that, especially in places like Camden with a highly diverse community and where schools are regularly over-subscribed, faith schools admission arrangements are damaging to community cohesion and social mobility. GC supports Frank Dobson MP's proposal that faith schools, which receive state subsidy, should accept at least 25% of their intake fromoutside the faith to which the school subscribes.

We believe that faith schools could still offer education within a faith ethos without needing to discriminate via a form of covert selection.

Camden Town with Primrose Hill Branch Labour Parties.

GC to send this motion to Ed Balls MP, Frank Dobson MP and the Labour Party National Policy Forum